


carry the fire

by interestinggin



Series: carry the fire: lives on the road [1]
Category: The Road - Cormac McCarthy, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Shaw wins, Crossover, F/M, Gen, M/M, Nuclear Winter, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-30 21:12:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interestinggin/pseuds/interestinggin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Because we're the good guys. And we're carrying the fire."</p><p>The nukes went off, and the humans did die, and the mutants did survive. In the cold and the snow and all the death that lurks on the road, somehow Erik must keep them alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. your life is made out of the days it's made out of

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based upon, draws inspiration from, and is heavily indebted to Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road', though it does not actually crossover with it at any point.
> 
> This fic contains some pretty graphic triggers, all of which require trigger warnings and most of which contain spoilers - **if you would like to check them out before reading, please see the end-notes by clicking 'more notes' below!**
> 
> Thanks to [seranita](http://seranita.livejournal.com/) for her help with my German.

_‘If they saw different worlds what they knew was the same._  
 _That the train would sit there slowly decomposing for all eternity_  
 _and that no train would ever run again.’_  
\- ‘The Road’, Cormac McCarthy.

 

Cold. Cold to freeze your blood to your bones and your skin to your ribs; cold to turn the bitter smog in your lungs to shards of ice that crackled as you ran; cold to cover your life and everything in it in a blanket of death-giving snow.

It has been cold now for 261 days. Hank knows this, because he has counted every single one of them.

 

When Erik wakes up the cold grey dawn has not yet broken, and the light has not yet crept over the wasted leafless treetops. He checks them all before checking himself; knows the tells of their breath and the shuffles of their sleep, and then he walks a little way further into the woods to have a piss.

It is difficult to hold the steady flow of warmth steady in the slowly fading blackness of the night, and it splashes against a tree and stains the snow yellow beneath. Erik does up his flies as best he can with such thick gloves on, and lets out a low whistle.

This he knows to be peace. A few moments where no-one, not even the weather, is trying to kill him.

Yes.

Back at the camp, or the patch of ground they slept on (or didn’t sleep on – it really depends on who you ask) – they are waking up, each at their own speed and in their own way. Alex is already on his feet, stamping up and down and hissing in the morning air to warm up his blood, trying to fill the new gaping gap in the group that they all know is there, and that none of them are prepared to acknowledge exists.

Charles’ eyes light up when he sees Erik approach, and he finishes opening a can of beans that they will share for breakfast, projecting a welcome _Good morning_ into Erik’s head. Erik would laugh at the pretension of normality if he didn’t know exactly why Charles did it. Each to their own.

“How many days, Hank?” he asks automatically of the monster with his strong furry arms wrapped protectively around Sean, the smallest and thus most susceptible to the cold. Hank stretches and wipes his glasses on the back of Sean’s coat as they sit up. He is gentle to the extreme. He knows all too well there will be no replacement if they break.

“Two hundred and sixty two days and counting,” he says in a growl.

“Excellent,” says Erik, “I’m glad we’ve got you.”

Hank bares his teeth in a smile. Smiles are an expensive commodity these days, and all the rarer for it. Erik is flattered, but he doesn’t smile back. Instead he nods, and Hank knows what he means.

 

It isn’t snowing today, and that is blessing. There is smoke rising from above the bones of trees. Alex sees it first, and tells Sean to go and look. The younger boy doesn’t fly much any more, partly because the cold pierces everything, even his thin chest and powerful voice, and partly because the noise is more than they can afford to make. Sean looks almost automatically to Erik, who squints up at the thin trickle of smoke in the glare of the sun and, finally, nods.

Sean rises above the treetops on a cry as sharp as the ice itself. The sun’s dim light greet him as a brother from behind the ashen clouds as grey as sickness, and for a few moments, up here in the light, he feels he understands Icarus. He soars, wishes he could soar high enough to feel the blessed warmth on his face, and dances in the smog like it’s nothing but dry ice and dreams.

“Is he sunbathing or scouting?” Hanks asks grumpily, far below the swooping speck.

“Don’t be unkind, Hank,” Charles says, and then he places bandaged and gloved fingers to his temple. _Sean. Come back, please. It isn’t safe._

Sean is on the ground a moment later, skidding onto the floor not altogether gracefully.

“Keep your hair on, Prof,” he says, the exhilaration not quite gone from his face. He punches Alex in the arm in his excitement. “I always forget, you know. What it’s like up there.”

Alex does know, somehow, and he pats him on the shoulder.

“What did you see?” Erik asks, pushing into the group and lowering the hood of his parka.

“Uh, looked like – maybe a couple of guys. A camp. Out in a clearing. Eating.”

“Right,” says Erik, “we go round.”

“Human?” Alex asks.

Sean raises one eyebrow higher than his hairline, and then the other follows. “Yeah, Havok,” he says, smirking, “they just have magical anti-nuclear coats.” He scratches the down on his chin, the down that isn’t quite the beard the others have, but will be, no doubt, in a few months. It is interrupted here and there by freckles, and the scars of former battles.

“Yeah, I know,” says Alex now, irritatedly, “but, I mean, were they me or Hank?”

Hank swats him round the back of the head with a paw almost absently. Thankfully for the boys, Erik is not looking, for Charles has just placed a hand on his shoulder.

“They might,” he murmurs, “be of help.” Erik sighs and turns to Sean.

“Big?” he asks shortly. Sean nods, and Erik turns to Charles with a grim look of victory. “Or,” he says, “they might kill us for our supplies and eat the flesh from our still living bodies. We go round.”

 

There is a man sat in the middle of the road, or what used to be a man. His skin has started decomposing, the cold not constant enough to leave him untouched by time. His face is contorted in exhaustion. The stubs of wings, bloodied and hacked off at the roots, stick from bony shoulderblades.

“Don’t touch it,” Erik warns as Charles moves closer to it, moved by pity and instinct, “it could have anything.”

“It used to be a man, my friend,” says Charles, bending over the body. He squats and looks into eyes that see nothing, not any more, not even pain.

“No,” Erik says in response, “it used to be a mutant. See the stumps?”

Charles looks at Erik as if he doesn’t quite know what he is, and Erik feels his heart shrivel a little. That look comes far too often, and by now, it should have stopped altogether. It hurts that Charles hasn’t adjusted enough yet to make that change, and it worries him in his sleep that it will be too late before he does.

“Yes, Erik,” Charles says after a while, turning back to the corpse, “I see the stumps.”

“He could fly,” Alex says to Sean, a little further down the road, his voice strained and worried. “He could have – I don’t know, flown away. Flown where you can see the sun. Escaped. Got out of here.”

Sean watches, says nothing, but pulls his hat from his head as Charles reaches out and closes the man’s staring eyes. Charles murmurs something that probably isn’t a prayer, and Sean shudders.

“You can only fly so far,” he says, almost to himself, and then he sniffs and leads the way down the road.

 

“What do you think happened to his wings, Professor?” Alex asks, much later.

Charles waits a while before answering, and takes a bite of the mysterious and unnameable meat from a can without a label. All they have left in the world is time, and so Charles likes to savour every unending moment, and pretend that they will last forever.

“I think,” he says, eventually, “that wings would make excellent sources of fuel.”

 

Some evenings, when he is too tired to complain, Erik knows that though all the group is sleeping Charles is sitting up by the dying fire, and letting his mind wander as far as he can push it.

_Hello_ , he whispers, stroking slumbering minds, _is anyone out there? Is anyone sane?_ Erik hears the murmurs in his dreams; hears the desperation in Charles’ mind for someone to talk to, for anyone who understands.

_Raven?_ he hears, suddenly, and he sits upright, the word cutting through him like glass. Charles does not seem to notice, his fingers pressed to his temples and his eyes staring into the embers, and Erik never lets him know what he heard.

Sometimes Charles hears whispers that he knows he can’t reply to; sometimes they are obviously lies, pretty words designed to lure less fortunate people into gaping hungry jaws. More often, all he hears is screaming, because nobody thinks any more. Nobody wants to speak to those who want them dead.

He felt it all, when the world came crashing down in a blaze of bombs. He heard every dying cry for a hundred miles. Erik dragged them all into the submarine to take cover, and he could hear Charles screaming in his head, screaming for everyone as they burned to nothing.

The end of the world was a terrible thing for everyone.

To this day, Erik’s not sure whether it was worse for them or the humans.

 

They don’t talk about what happened to Raven.

They just don’t.

 

“How many days, Hank?”

“Two hundred and eighty nine days and counting.”

“Excellent.” Erik asks these questions without really listening to the answers, because he knows that it’s the little things that keep you going.

For Hank, whose life was turned upside down so soon before the bomb hit that he wasn’t yet even sure how to move again - lost like a newborn babe - his maths has kept him alive. He takes solace in the one thing that has always made sense, and never asked anything from him. Never mind that there’s no need for any of this; that no-one will ever need him to build machines or solve equations again.

Erik wants to know how long it’s been, and so Hank makes sure he keeps track.

 

Charles hears them first. There are voices clear as day from far in the distance that speak with barbed tongues even inside their own minds, speak of wanton base needs and hunger and pain. He turns and stares up the road the way they’ve come.

“Erik,” he says softly. Erik understands immediately.

“Get off the road,” he yells, “get into cover, quickly, come on.” The group does not scatter; they have done this too many times, though it is no less terrifying for that. They find a ditch half covered with broken rusted vehicles and dying shrubs and crouch there, hoping that it will shield them from evil eyes.

The gang appears down the road in the dust cloud, and even from this far Erik can see they were right to vanish. He holds Alex close under one arm. The boy is trembling; yes, Alex is scared and Erik knows why. It is all very well to be afraid of the unknown. Fear of the known, of the certain memory of pain and anger and loss, is so very much worse than that could ever be.

“It’ll be fine,” he finds himself saying, “as long as you’re quiet.” He is fairly certain that is a lie, but he keeps his hand steady and cool on Alex’s back.

“What if they find us?”

“If they find us,” says Erik quietly, “then I will kill you all before they take you.”

They each wear metal dog tags round their necks, and it is not for identity. Erik knows he could pick any of these corpses from a line-up, half eaten or ravaged or not. He has had to do that before, digging pits when people had been gnawed by guard dogs nearly as hungry as he was. But Erik knows that there are things you have to do, promises you have to make to your own family.

No matter how Charles has promised, Erik does not think this kind and gentle man could take the life of the ones he still thinks of as children. Not now. Even if it was the only kindness he could give.

Charles looks at him, however, with clear unworried eyes, and whispers only for Erik _I will do it for you._

Erik reaches out his other hand, and squeezes Charles’ thigh in response. There is something very beautiful about promising to kill your friend if it comes to it. Something out of a fairy tale, from a world long ago; something a child might say in innocence and purity and nothing but honest love.

Erik wonders if there will ever be children again, and if so, what they will think of this world that has been made for them.

 

When the gang come close enough that they can pick out individual mutations – one of the three is a fire mutant, which explains why he is part of a dominant gang; one of them seems to be a teleporter, and the third, a woman, shows no external signs – Erik squeezes Alex’s shoulder, very slowly. Alex understands, and holding Hank’s hand, ducks down a little more into the ditch.

Charles and Erik sit a little higher with their backs to the road, invisible to all but the closest eye, and hope, desperately, not to hear anything that makes them panic.

“You said you saw something,” shouts a low and angry American voice, and then another responds with “I did, I swear.”

“I’m going to try over here,” calls the female, and it is far too close for comfort.

Footsteps tread softly through the long scrubland, but not softly enough. Erik looks at Charles in panic, and wonders if he’s been long enough out of practice that he won’t be able to snap their necks when the time comes. Not yet, he thinks desperately, not yet. Charles presses fingers to his temple, opens his eyes wide, and _projects_.

The woman leans right over the ditch and looks straight into Erik’s eyes. Erik is sure she can hear his heart pounding, can smell his sweat and the fear of the children, can taste on the air the soft young taste of living fresh meat. He freezes, lost in her cold unyielding stare.

“Nothing over here,” she hisses, sounding disappointed, and she flicks a tail in irritation as she drags herself back up and stalks away.

Erik doesn’t let out a breath of relief, not yet. In a world where mutants are all that’s left, they have grown canny of each other. He would not put it past the raiders to be waiting, waiting for their own little band of brothers to reveal themselves. He looks at Charles with gratitude in his eyes, and knows that Charles will never breathe a word of his fear.

Charles himself looks exhausted, and he sags slightly deeper into the ditch.

_I can’t – do that – again._

_It’s alright_ , thinks Erik, _it’s alright. You won’t have to. I promise._

 

It is night by the time they emerge, and Erik places a finger to his lips before they pull themselves out of the ditch, limbs frozen half solid, tired from fear and adrenaline. He knows they won’t get far tonight.

On Erik’s orders, they climb out on the opposite side of the road, and make for the cover of a nearby copse. Hank points out, as they run like foxes through the dark grass, that there is a shack in a field over the other side of the road that would be perfect cover for hiding the night out in.

“I know,” says Erik, “and that’s why we’re moving away from it.”

 

On the two hundredth and ninety first day, they find a burnt out car with shopping bags in the back seat. There are, thank the god Erik cannot believe in, a few non-perishables in there, and Hank casts a dubious look at some tinned fish before Sean firmly takes it from him and chucks it as far away as he can.

“We’re starving to death,” he says bluntly, “we’re not desperate.”

Then Charles lets out a noise that nobody has heard in two hundred and ninety one days.

Charles laughs.

It is more of a whoop, really, but it is a cry that speaks of unmistakable and uncontrollable joy, and Erik is so startled by it that he is readying his power to kill before he realises that it isn’t a scream.

“What,” he asks, hurriedly running round to that side of the car, “what is it?” Charles shows him something in a plastic bag, and his eyes widen. “Good god,” he says.

“What is it?” Hank asks.

“It’s a surprise,” says Charles firmly, over the top of Erik’s answer, and no tightly wrapped scarf can hide his wide and delighted grin.

 

They camp under a railway bridge and Alex goes in first, sets a bush afire with a burst of energy.

They don’t know how much longer it’s going to last, that circle of control upon his chest. Hank estimates maybe a couple of years at most; then the blades will come flying out again. Alex knows, without anyone having to say a word, that this will mean he must leave the group or kill them all. Erik knows too, and he spends too much of every day trying to think of a way to defeat this certainty.

“Spam,” suggests Hank.

Sean shakes his head vehemently. “We didn’t just hit the jackpot to eat spam. Let’s have noodles or something.”

“Alright, then you can go and get the water.”

Charles silences the bickering by reaching into his rucksack and pulling out something wrapped in silver foil and glossy brown paper. The packet is grubby, but unmistakeably a Hershey’s chocolate bar.

“Fucking hell,” Sean says, staring at it.

“Sean,” says Charles, disapprovingly, “don’t swear, please.”

 

He breaks it into twelve individual chunks and passes a piece to each of one of them. Alex takes off his gloves, the better to feel the frozen candy in the palm of his hand. Hank puts his piece tentatively in his mouth, tasting it almost gingerly with fangs that haven’t eaten chocolate before. Sean, to the surprise of nobody, thrusts it immediately between his teeth and sits there sucking it, a happy far off grin on his face that speaks of other times and other tastes.

“This bit’s yours, Erik,” says Charles, passing him a chunk.

Erik sniffs his, and looks almost sad as he bites down on a corner. Charles gives a knowing smile as he leaves his own to melt on the tongue.

“Do you think there’s any other chocolate left in the world?” Sean asks him.

Charles rolls the piece around his mouth as he thinks.

“Quite possibly, if it was stored correctly. I'm not really that much of a Hershey's fan, you know. We used to have Cadbury’s, in Oxford,” he tells the group through sticky lips, “though that was sweeter than this.”

“Our mum used to buy that from the store,” Sean says, knowledgeably.

“What about you, Erik?” Hank asks.

Erik waits to swallow the final fragment of his piece before he speaks. Even in this world, this world where past lives no longer matter, he is loath to speak of his childhood, and he is still unsure as to how much they know; how much Charles has told them or how much it is safe to reveal.

“There was a chocolatier at the bottom of my road when I was a boy,” he says, licking his fingers. “He made praline. It was… very good.”

The boys nod, and Erik risks a look at Charles, who is saying nothing at all.

“Save the rest,” Erik tells him, “we’ll have it for breakfast.”

“Alright,” says Charles.

 

Most often, in the middle of the night, Erik sees Charles as he never wants to see him again; bent over the body of his sister, too exhausted, too broken to even cry. He thanks himself for small mercies. They got to her before the bastards had time to eat all of her. But there was still too much missing, too much blood, and the smell was all too cloying and dirty.

Charles held her body to him, and everyone could feel his pain, slicing through like shards or screams or something so much worse. And if they could feel it, everyone else could too.

“Charles,” Erik said at the time, grabbing his shoulders, “calm down, please.”

Charles didn’t even seem to hear him. He shrugged Erik off as easily as anything, lowered his hood and pressed chapped lips to bloodied skin. Erik could hear the cries for her as loud as if he was weeping, and panic rose again.

Alex appeared by his shoulder.

“I think they’ve gone,” he said, angrily, “but I got one of them.”

In answer to an unasked question, Sean added, “He’s dead.”

“Charles, for god’s sake, you’re projecting and someone will hear,” Erik snapped, reaching for his shoulder, but somehow unable to touch it. Charles pulled the body closer to him and _god, there weren’t any legs_ , and suddenly Erik couldn’t bring himself to touch him.

Behind him, he could hear someone being sick.

In the end, it was Hank - wonderful, sweet Hank, who had run after the bastards and knocked one of them out with strength to match his fury that he was just coming to understand - who placed a trembling paw on Charles’ back, and let him fall back against him.

“I let her down,” Charles whispered. “I promised her I’d look after her.”

“We all promised a lot of things,” Hank said, and Charles leant into his fur, seemingly unable to look anymore.

“We'll bury her,” Erik suggested, as calmly as he could.

“No,” Charles said, into Hank’s chest, "no." He stood, brushed the dirt from his clothes, and said in a shaking voice, “They’re hungry. She’s dead now. It’s not as if she has any use for it.”

“Professor, you can’t seriously suggest we leave her-” Sean tried, but Charles said nothing, simply looked at Erik and asked _And what now?_

Erik didn’t have an answer. He still doesn’t.

 

Three miles from the road, Sean spots a farmhouse away down a winding snowy lane. It looks almost picturesque, like a Christmas card or a painting titled _Winter Scene_ from the days when isolation was the impossible American Dream. There is no light on, but it looks warm and it looks intact.

“We have to go,” Erik says, standing. “We’ve got no other choice.”

“It doesn’t look safe,” Hank begins, but Erik is riled.

“Where on this forsaken earth does, Hank?” he asks. Charles lays a hand on his arm and almost imperceptibly squeezes it. Erik breathes out through his nose.

“Sorry,” he says, calming, “but it’s this or we die of hunger. And I’m not going to let that happen. Not to you.”

Hank colours, and nods, and Erik points at Alex.

“You, me, Charles,” he says. “Sean, Hank; take the gun, find cover, and wait. If we’re not back in three hours, we’re dead and you move on.” He looks at Hank with grim eyes. Hank nods again.

“We’ll see you in a while,” he says, and Erik and his team head for the house.

 

Erik holds a finger to his lips as they approach, though the house - a large, rambling farmhouse with a ramshackle barn and blown out windows - looks empty enough. Fragments of corroded metal which Erik felt from half a mile away are showing through the cracked concrete, and the once-sturdy wooden door has also long since gone to dust.

Alex takes the first step inside.

“Nothing,” he calls, and then Charles grabs Erik’s wrist like a vice and hisses _voices there are people in there_.

“Alex, get out of it,” Erik shouts, and then there is a snarl and a shout of “What the fuck” and Erik doesn’t think; his mind shouts _Alex is in danger_ , and he rips a piece of piping from the concrete without bending down and runs in.

A man with metallic claws that Erik can feel humming in the air has them pressed up against Alex’s neck, and another man with sunglasses on wheels round and holds up his hands in an exasperated mockery of surrender as Erik and Charles come crashing in.

“Look, we’re not raiders, we don’t want to eat him, we just want you to go the fuck away,” he says, without preamble. The man with claws and mad eyes laughs.

“Speak for yourself, Cyclops, I could stand to do some damage.”

“ _Logan_ ,” Cyclops growls in warning, and Logan laughs, but the claws stay pressed up against Alex’s skin.

“Get the fuck off me,” Alex spits, and Cyclops looks at him through his glasses and sighs.

“Would you shut up, kid? The grownups are talking.”

“You get your claws off that boy,” Erik says, his voice carefully level, “or I will rip them from your skin.”

Logan looks at him with half a grin that would make a more sane man quake with fear.

“How d’you plan on doing that, bub?” he laughs.

“Listen,” the one called Cyclops says, and he is better at sounding tired and irritated than Erik or even Alex could ever be, “I’ve got two high focused energy beams behind these glasses, and I can slice right through you before you can even move.”

“And I can crush your skull with your own thoughts,” says Charles, almost sounding kind. “Checkmate.”

Cyclops looks right at him, and although Erik cannot see his eyes he is sure he is impressed. And then he sighs again and scratches his beard, and hisses “Logan, for god’s sake,”.

Logan growls, and throws Alex to them. The boy skids across the floor and lands in a heap at Charles’ feet, but is back up again in seconds, spitting “ _I’m going to blow the bastard sky-high_.”

“No, Alex,” Charles says, quietly, “that would not be a good idea.”

“Is there food?” asks Erik, lowering the pipe that is hovering in front of him, but not letting it drop completely.

“What the fuck business is it of yours?” Logan asks, and Erik can clearly see he is sulking. He turns to the slightly saner seeming one of the two; although sanity is not always a plus any more.

“We just came here to see if there was food,” he says again.

Cyclops smiles completely without humour, and it’s unnerving. Erik knows men like this, because he is one, and he knows the game is up now.

“Did you?” he says calmly.

“I’m Erik,” he says. “That boy you tried to kill was Alex. Laser powers. And this is Charles.”

“Scott,” says Scott, sounding uninterested, “Optic beams. And the indestructible wolfman over there is Logan.”

“Hello, Logan,” says Charles cheerfully, because after all this he is still Charles.

Logan says nothing.

“Yes,” says Scott, stepping forward, and Erik raises the pipe again in warning, “there’s food. There’s a few tins, and half a bratwurst in the basement if you’re feeling really brave. But the thing is, we were here first, and we haven’t got anything.”

“Nor have we,” Charles says, and Alex spits on the floor.

“Can we just kill them and take the stuff already?” he hisses.

“A deal,” says Erik. “Your best offer. What else do you need?”

Scott seems in that moment to size him up, and Erik knows he recognises a fellow pragmatist, and a man who doesn’t take kindly to anyone, so will protect the ones he does. He wonders, briefly, why an idiot like Logan matters so much to him, but puts it from his mind. He can ask Charles later.

“Got any blankets?” Scott asks eventually, and he reaches into a backpack and pulls out two tins of chilli.

“Not for two tins, no.”

After a beat, Scott pulls out two more. “Don’t push your luck,” he says.

Erik nods, and Charles is on the floor and rummaging through his own rucksack in moments, pulling out a dirty yellow blanket and throwing it across the floorboards.

Scott grabs for it at the same time as Alex dashes across and snatches the tins. He glares at Logan, who is clearly bored by the entire deal, and is scratching his claws against the walls.

“Fuck this,” he growls, “I’m off. Are you coming or aren’t you?”

He pulls his hood up and stalks out of the room. Scott follows, rolling his eyes.

“Good luck,” says Charles, as Alex and Erik concentrate on packing the tins away.

Scott simply chuckles in response, and then he is gone from their lives forever.

 

“Were they a couple?” Erik asks, as they’re climbing over a broken down wall and wading through another blizzard that threatens, just for a change, to kill them all.

“What?” Charles shouts, the howling wind tearing at his coat and stealing all breath from his lungs before it can become words.

_Scott. Logan. Were they partners?_

Charles looks, as best as Erik can see through the snowfall, a little confused.

_No_ , he thinks, helping Alex over. _They both had the same girlfriend. Sometimes the people who are important to you are the people who are important to the ones you love. Some people understand that._

The insinuation stings a little, though not as much as the icy wind, and Erik focuses on making sure all of the group are over the wall and hugging their packs to their bodies. He points at a forest, and they head for it.

_I didn’t see her._

_You wouldn’t have._ Charles shivers as Erik holds out a hand and pulls him closer to the relative shelter of the trees. _She’s been dead for nearly two months._

 

They sit up that evening in a long-abandoned hunters’ hut and enjoy the chilli, heating it over a paraffin stove. Charles tells him off when he sarcastically asks what they think the prey is. Erik reluctantly agrees that the storm means even the hardest of hunters will leave them be tonight, although he insists on a watch rota.

Some people might call it paranoia, or even cruelty. But the truth is, Erik would never have been a good father in a real world. He has tried, and failed, to imagine nurturing these lost kids, to imagine having children of his own whom he takes to school and plays football with and sticks the drawings of up on the fridge.

It has taken the end of his universe to create one in which he can have a family.

And perhaps it may seem cruel, but now he has no intention of losing them.

 

There are some things that can be postponed, but can never be avoided. In the firelight, when the stars are dead and dim, Charles comes and sits beside him and stares out into the night.

“It’s quiet,” he says softly.

“Yes,” says Erik, because there is really nothing else to say to that. He takes off his gloves, and blows on his hands.

The kiss, when it comes, is harsh and uncompromising; lips pressed against his in more of a crush than a tender give and take. Charles’ chin rubs against his, scratching his cheeks with long and rough stubble that is not yet thick enough to have grown soft, and Erik threads his fingers through the tangled mess of hair and clutches the back of Charles’ head, pulls himself further into the burning warmth of his lips and arms and melts into it like snow.

Charles is the first to pull away, a slightly dreamy and unfocused look on his face.

“I enjoyed that,” he says with half a smile.

“Okay,” Erik says, and he leans in for another.


	2. nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Because we're the good guys. And we're carrying the fire."
> 
> The nukes went off, and the humans did die, and the mutants did survive. In the cold and the snow and all the death that lurks on the road, somehow Erik must keep them alive.

_'What would you do if I died?_  
 _If you died I would want to die too._  
 _So you could be with me?_  
 _Yes. So I could be with you._  
 _Okay.'_  
\- 'The Road', Cormac McCarthy

Three hundred days and counting, and nobody really feels much of a need to speak.

The road winds its way through a village where some of the houses are still standing. Alex is sceptical, and votes for going as far out of the way as they can. Sean argues that if they avoid everyone and everything, what was the point in even surviving? In the end, Erik silences everyone by saying they’ll go through the town, and they’ll make sure that they shoot first.

“And ask questions later?” Charles asks, smirking.

“I don’t intend to ask questions,” Erik says calmly.

For the most part, the villages’ buildings are shattered, though some of them have doors and windows; one even has a swing hanging from one broken rope on the porch. It makes Erik smile to look at it, though he can feel that it makes Charles sad. They go through the houses methodically, in two teams, meeting in the road after each and finding nothing.

“Someone’s cleared it out,” Alex curses, “they got to it before us. I said we shouldn’t have come.”

“If there were hunters, Alex,” Charles says, kindly, “they’d want us to think it was worth sticking around.”

“Which it isn’t,” Erik adds, “so let’s progress. We might be able to find somewhere better by nightfall.”

 

In the front yard of one of the houses, a woman is hanging up washing.

It takes Erik a few moments to realize what is wrong with the image, it comes so completely out of the blue. She is whistling to herself and stamping up and down to keep out the cold, fiddling with wooden pegs in her fingers that are wrapped in thick woolen mittens. A strand of white hair is falling forward from out of her woollen hat.

She looks up then and notices them. Erik tenses himself for a fight or a vanishing; whichever she opts for will suit him. But then she smiles, reaches down into her basket that she has propped on a rotting tree stump, and pulls out another pair of pants.

“Where did all o’ y’all come from, then?” she asks, her voice a clear Southern twang that’s smooth as cream.

Nobody says anything, and she goes back to whistling; a tune it takes Erik a moment to recognize, and that hits him like a bullet when he does.

_Smile, though your heart is breaking…_

Charles looks at Erik and raises one eyebrow. _Safe?_

Erik isn’t sure at all. She finishes pinning up a man’s sweater, and turns to them.

“Muh name’s Anna,” she says, softly, “but y’all kin call me Rogue, if you prefer.” She jerks her head towards the front door of the house. “You boys want some cocoa?”

“How do we know we can trust you?” Erik asks, holding Sean at the wrist.

She looks confused, amused, and unless Erik is imagining it, a little offended. “What d’you mean?”

“You could be trying to trick us to steal our supplies,” he offers. “Or to steal us. Or worse. It wouldn’t be the first time, and I’m in charge of this group, and I can’t put them at risk, Rogue.”

Anna picks up the basket and balances it on wide hips. She leans her head on one side and pouts a little as she thinks, a playful smile darting around her lips.

“Well,” she says slowly, “I don’t suppose you kin be sure, not really. Your call.”

And she turns and walks inside, her hips swaying.

The coldness in the street and in the world seems to snap back as she vanishes from view, hitting them in the chests as if it had gone and arrived all in an instant.

It is moments like this that make Erik sweat at nights, moments where they all look at him with eyes that ask can we? and hearts that want to do something so monumentally stupid that it is almost certainly going to get them all killed. But Sean is actually smiling, and Erik almost feels like the sun is shining again. Maybe if they keep on flying, he’ll fly high enough to see it.

“Alright,” he says, chucking, “alright, but we stay on guard.”

Sean punches the air. “ _Yesssssssss_.”

 

“Git up, sugah, we got company,” Anna is calling, shaking out her hair from the hat as they cautiously enter after her.

Erik feels the metal of the little stove singing to him, and the aluminium sheeting covering the windows; keeping as much of the warmth in as possible. Charles grins at Erik, mouths _only one_ , and Erik feels his heart start beating again as well.

A man wrapped in about three layers of sweaters, enters from the curtained area at the back of the room. He presses a tender kiss to Anna’s shoulder before even seeming to notice the dishevelled group of travellers in front of him. His face, with barely a day’s worth of stubble on it, twists into a smile that might be a smirk.

“Well, now,” he says, more than a hint of French in his thick drawl, “what ‘ave we ‘ere? You been pickin’ up pets again, Anna?”

“ _Ne sais pas jalous, mon chion_ ,” she says into her scarf, and he laughs. Erik subdues a smirk, but not quick enough.

“Ah,” says the man, “ _vous parlez Francais, mon ami_?” Erik nods. “French or Cajun?”

“No,” Erik says. The man’s face turns dark for half a second, and then it seems his ears catch up with his thoughts, and he breaks into a fantastic smile that nearly tears his face in two. “Brilliant,” he says, completely seriously, and then he tears his gaze back to Anna, who is measuring spoonfuls of cocoa, one into each mug.

“I don’ think we ‘ave enough cups, babe,” he says, looking concerned. She waves him away without even looking. He smiles, and then turns to the rest of the group.

“Remy Le Beau,” he says, by way of introduction, “an’ welcome to the Bayou, friends.”

Charles looks concerned. “We didn’t realise we’d reached Louisiana,” he says, furrowing his brow.

Both Anna and Remy let out a catastrophic roar of laughter. “The Bayou’s the name of this house, honey,” Anna says, handing him a mug of weak cocoa, “’cause it’s just as hospitable as home ever was.”

“She’s such a cynic,” says Remy, looking affectionate.

“Thank you, Mrs Le Beau,” Hank says politely, as she pushes a cup into his hands too. Remy chuckles.

“Nah, no’ yet,” he says, curling his feet up under him like a cat, “ah think ah’d embarrass her.”

“You always embarrass me,” Anna says, not missing a beat. She takes off her coat, revealing a stretched and large stomach, and indicates that the others can do the same. Remy has snatched it off her shoulders and wrapped it round his own before she can put it down.

“Remy,” she groans, sitting on his lap and leaning her head against his chest, “you got your own coat and you know it.”

“Ah’m no’ good with the cold,” he says to the group, by way of explanation, and after a pause for thought, he adds “you know, i’s not been my favouri’ year.” He winces a little as she sits on somewhere uncomfortable. “ _Tu es grosse_ ,” he mutters, and she hits him in the arm.

Charles laughs out loud, and takes a sip of the cocoa, which Erik looks at dubiously before placing it to his own mouth. It’s warm, and thick, and part of him doesn’t really care if it’s poisoned or not. But from what he can see, there is no logical reason for it to be, and he watched Anna like a hawk as she was preparing it. As far as he can tell, the mug she is pressing into Remy’s fingerless gloves is the same liquid through and through. It is therefore, he thinks, noticing the way her fingers linger on the handle, unlikely to be poisoned.

Introductions are brief, although Anna thinks Charles’ accent is “jus' _divine_ ” and makes him name at least a dozen objects in the room before she is satisfied, and Remy insists on knowing everyone’s full name and precisely where in the world they originate from. He claims to be familiar with every single one of them. Erik is unconvinced, but impressed by his commitment to bullshit.

“Hey,” Anna asks the children brightly, “you wanna show me your powers?”

“Just don’t show ‘em yours, love,” says Remy, patting her lightly on the arm as she pulls herself from the chair with a concerted effort.

“Fuck yes,” says Alex at the same time, “but only because mine’s the best.”

“I can fly, Havok,” Sean says, happily.

“Look, one of us here can crush the other ones without trying,” says Hank, following them out, “and it isn’t either of you.”

“Be careful!” Erik shouts after them in an exasperated voice, before turning back to his cocoa with a look of intense annoyance and slight amusement on his face. He looks at Charles, who is quietly giggling.

“You’re ‘eadin’ south, I take it?” Remy says in an undertone, over the sounds of laughter and electric bursts from outside.

Both Erik and Charles nod.

“Have you met many other mutants?” Charles asks. Remy sits back, considering the answer.

“Oui,” he says, “and no. I don’t really count it as meetin’ if I ‘ave to kill ‘em, and I don’ take kin’ly to someone tryin’ to rape and eat mah girl, you know?” He looks at them through thin red eyes.

Charles feels the urge to point out that they have absolutely no desire to do either of those things to Anna, and as he does so Erik can see the flash of pain across his face. He suspects it does not go unnoticed by Remy, either, but the man has enough tact not to mention it.

“Mos’ of them are going south,” he says, reaching into a pocket for a deck of cards, which he shuffles and deals as if they have already agreed on a game, “but some of them come north.”

“What do they say?” Erik asks.

Remy takes a while, and then he picks up a card and holds it tightly. There is a flash of purple smoke, and it explodes in a burst of light in his grip.

“Dat dere’s nothing’,” he says seriously, looking at them both to gauge their reactions; “not south, not anywhere, and de world’s too big for just us.”

 

Remy announces he’ll make jambalaya, although he grudgingly adds that because there isn’t really any food, he’ll be making it with tinned ham. Charles says he can help with that, and pulls out the last tin of okra from the car. Remy’s face lights up into that magnificent grin, and he claps Charles on the back.

“You cook, _mon frere_?” he asks, looking around for something to open the tin with.

“Not if you value your intestinal lining, he doesn‘t,” says Erik, reaching out and opens it with one hand. Remy looks both proud and surprised.

“ _Merci_ ,” he says, pouring it into the battered old saucepan.

“Congratulations, by the way,” Charles says, politely, leaning against the wall of the shack. “How far along is she?” The little stove is surprisingly warming, and he has taken off his coat for the first time in months to be standing in just an old sweater and gloves.

Remy laughs and whistles to himself between his teeth, long and low, before cursing in a series of horrific blasphemies that only a true Catholic could manage that he doesn’t have any celery.

“I swear to de ‘oly virgin, I ever find ‘oo made it cold, ahm gonna take all ’er clothes an’ make ’er stand outside while I throw snowballs a’ ‘er derriere.”

“You think it was a woman?” Charles asks, amused despite himself.

“Only a woman would tink dis is funny,” Remy says darkly. “An’ she about two months.”

Erik leaves them to their conversation, their pretences of normality.

He is already starting to suspect that Remy’s mind, bubbling and flying from anywhere, is anything but normal - he suspects also that what draws Charles to him is now drawing him to Remy, this desire for a mind that is interesting.

(Erik asked Charles once why he picked him out of the sea. Charles thought for a long time, and then said ‘Well, it’s a little bent on revenge, but there’s definitely a spark of something wrong there.’ He spent far too long smiling before he thought to add ‘Oh, and you were drowning’.)

(This is also the reason Erik is drawn to Charles.)

 

Outside, wrapped up tight against the wind that whistles down between the houses, they are building a snowman. Erik stands on the back porch, coat pulled close around him, and watches carefully as they stick rocks into the head for eyes. Snow, yes. Snow used to mean children playing, and laughter, and cold socks on the radiators for days, not skin sticking to clothing and icicles in your hair. He knows this, because once a little lost boy watched it happen.

He never thought he would watch it happen and feel like part of it. Still he stands on the edge, a little wary, not wanting to get overly involved. If he isn’t involved, he tells himself, he can always give them up. Erik has always been good at denial.

“We need to give it some teeth if it’s gonna be Dad,” Sean is saying. Anna laughs, a deep and full laugh that’s like Remy’s, but huskier and deeper. He can see it clearly, now that Charles has made the connection - of course Charles made the connection, he probably heard her think it - her hips just that little too wide, a growing curve in her belly and sweat on her brow. She looks, he thinks, far too alive for this dead world, so it makes sense that she’s living for two.

Erik tries not to think about that child, growing up in a world where people will want it dead from the moment it is born, where it could be destroyed by background radiation within minutes of birth if it isn’t born a mutant. He tries also not to think of how Anna will look, how she will recover, giving birth in a place like this. He watches her smile at the children, sticking her tongue between her teeth as she considers the snow sculpture, and tries instead to think what a good mother she will probably be.

“If it’s gonna be your dad, ah think he looks a mite too cheery, don’t you?” she says now, picking up some twigs and sticking them above the eyes to create frowning eyebrows.

Hank presses sharp pieces of gravel in beneath the nose to give the illusion of fangs or teeth. “He’s not you, Yogi Bear,” says Anna, sounding fond, and somehow, despite being blue and covered in fur, Hank manages to blush.

“Yogi Bear?” Erik asks, walking down the steps.

“Smarter than the average,” Hank says, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“Who’s it meant to be?” Erik asks, folding his arms and scrutinising the snowman. “It looks fairly… intense for a children’s game.”

Alex bursts out laughing at that, wide and delighted, and is just opening his mouth to say something cutting when Charles pokes his head out of the door and says “Does anyone fancy a wash and a shave? Remy says he could melt us some snow,” and suddenly, just for a few moments, everything becomes too warm and wonderful to contemplate.

 

Clean. They are clean, and they have spent the night sleeping on blankets in a warm room. This alone, Erik knows, is worth more to the boys than a thousand loving hugs that he could pretend to give them. You readjust your priorities quickly when staying alive becomes one.

Anna doesn’t get up to wish them goodbye, and Remy jokingly confides that morning sickness is “a bitch an’ a half, my frien’s,”. In reality, though, Erik is relieved. He is not good with farewells, and suspects that Anna - wonderfully alive, vivid Anna - is not good with them either. You cannot be alive or dead for goodbye, but must be somewhere in between.

You must belong here in this hellhole, and neither of them do.

“I hope the birth - is easy,” Charles says, his skin clear and hairless and no doubt cold under his scarf. Erik has not gone that far, simply trimming his beard down to a cleaner, manageable length, and his hair with it. Charles would not consider cutting his hair, though whilst it is shaggy, it smells of soap. He is too vain, Erik thinks; who does he imagine will be looking?

“ _Merci_ , my frien’,” Remy says, as Charles leaves, smiling his goodbye to the room that has bought them a few more days of life.

Erik cannot bring himself to give utterance to hopes and dreams that have no chance of coming true. He settles for something more real, something he can truly pray they get.

“I hope the birth happens,” he says. Remy looks at him as if seeing him for the first time then, and Erik sees the concern, the love, the terror of his own heart reflected in those red eyes.

“Me too, _mon frere_ ,” he says, honestly. “Me too.”

 

They walk in the shadow of mountains, because it shields them from the snow.

Charles brightly informs them on one day that current theories suggest that nuclear winters will only last for a couple of years at most.

“Isn’t that right, Hank?” he says, desperately cheerful.

Hank says nothing, and that says everything.

 

On some evenings, somebody will mention Moira, and everyone feels sick to their stomachs, because Moira was the first that they saw as the flesh melted from her body and her bones turned to black, before Azazel switched them back to the mansion and vanished again. Even Erik felt bad for her, this woman that he did not understand nor care for.

She did not deserve that. Erik knows that now, which is progress at the least.

Nobody deserved that.

Ovens had nothing on that.

 

They hear a crack like a whip up in the forests, and they go to investigate despite Erik’s objections, because as he is fond of saying, nobody really listens to him anymore.

Somewhere, Erik can hear a child crying.

Charles places his hand upon a tree and pulls himself up the slope, and then there is a noise like nails on a blackboard, and a blue hand at his throat. The man or boy or creature pins him against the tree, and behind him, a tail snakes into the air like it has nothing to do with him, raising itself to go in for the kill.

“Stay,” the man says, in a thick Germanic accent, “avay from my daughter.”

“ _Halt_!” Erik shouts, stepping forwards and tearing his gaze from Charles, because he’s getting tunnel vision of Charles in danger and that isn’t practical at all. “ _Sind Sie Deutscher_?”

The man does not move his tail, nor his hand with its two fingers clutching tight at Charles’ throat, and Erik can see that his eyes are glowing yellow. He knows full well why Charles cannot fight back with a man who looks like this; never will. He thinks Charles might be crying. He cannot bear to look.

“ _Ja_ ,” the man says, furrowing his brow. “ _Und Sie_?”

“ _Ich bin Jude_ ,” Erik says, for something to say, something that will stop the man from plunging the sharp, forked tail into Charles’ flesh.

The man frowns. “ _Es tut mir leid_ ,” he says, memory flashing through his eyes for just a moment, and then he looks down. By his feet, a little blue girl has wrapped her own tail around his leg and is clutching at his knees, staring up at Erik with terror in her own bright yellow eyes. She grips his pants leg tightly. “ _Talia_ ,” the man says, sounding irritated, “ _nicht jetzt, bitte_.”

Talia doesn’t let go, but places a thumb in her mouth. She looks at Erik, and her eyes go wider and wider. Erik tries his best not to look like someone who will kill your child in front of you. “ _Hallo, Talia_ ,” he says, almost gently, waggling his fingers at her. His gloves are thick and woollen, and it makes her giggle.

“ _Fassen Sie meine Tochter nicht an_ ,” the man snaps.

“You going to speak in a language any of the rest of us can understand?” Alex says grumpily.

“ _Verdammt, Alex_ ,” Erik sighs, and then he turns to the man. “ _Sprechen sie Englisch_?”

There is a pause. “Yes,” he says, in a voice rough and clearly unused to it, “but I have nothing to say to you. Get out. Go avay. Never come back here.”

“And fuck you too,” Sean says pleasantly, stretching his fingers.

“Kurt,” Charles gasps, still struggling for air in his grasp, “we don’t want to hurt you, we don’t want to hurt her.”

“You think I am stupid?” he spits, throwing Charles back against the tree. Talia gasps.

Charles sees the girl for the first time as the man called Kurt lets go of his throat and steps backwards, but it is then that he starts to look as if he cannot breathe.

“Raven?” he says, unable to tear his gaze from the little girl, who stares at him nervously. In truth, she looks almost identical, like Raven’s own child; a little girl lost and scared waking up each day in a world that was never meant for her.

“ _Nein_ ,” she says, hiding behind Kurt’s legs as Charles, falling to the cold hard ground and dizzy from lack of oxygen, reaches out a hand to touch her. 

“Oh god,” he whispers, “Raven… Raven, I’m sorry…”

“ _Vati_ ,” she whispers, reaching up little blue hands to tug on his shirt. She sounds terrified. Kurt flings out a tail to whip Charles’ shaking hand out the way, swears at him, and then snatches Talia in his arms and vanishes with a crack.

Charles is left alone, trembling on the earth. “Oh god,” he whispers, tears streaming down his cheeks, all of it hitting him at last, “my sister… they killed her, they fucking killed her…I didn't... Erik…”

Erik, destined by nature or man to be unable to empathise, kneels down besides him, and holds him in his arms, rocking him back and forth until the cries of pain turn into choking, and then empty, wordless keening, and then to exhausted silence. Silence as tired as the world and sky.

 

“Where exactly are we going?” Hank asks, on the three hundredth and twentieth day.

They are further south now than they have been before, and the snow is giving way, albeit temporarily, to vast frozen ground and rust coloured hard earth. The wind is worse, whipping at all of their clothes and hair, and although there are places that are drier they know there will be more in the way of raiders.

Because of this, Erik doesn’t hear him at first, focusing on trudging against the wind.

“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Hank shouts at him, and somehow his voice is loud enough to carry.

Erik stops, braces himself against the gale, and turns round to Hank.

“Well, yes,” he yells back, “everyone dies.”

“I meant soon!”

Erik lets Hank catch up with him, and then he puts his face close to the monster’s own.

“Nobody,” Erik snarls, “is dying. Nobody.”

 

Erik wakes up in the middle of the night with nobody in his arms, and his first thought is that he must have dreamt everything, everything from the liberation of the camp onwards. Then he realises he’s in his thirties and not a scared little boy anymore, but a brave and responsible adult.

Then he hears the cough, and he is a scared little boy all over again.

“Charles?” he asks, pulling himself to his feet. Charles is crouching a little way off, his hands braced against the floor, making noises that sound like an animal. Erik feels like a lost child wanting his mother to be alright; the need to be told things will be okay consumes him, and he runs up to Charles and smacks him on the back until the choking subsides.

“You just - had something in your throat, right?” Erik asks desperately, clutching his shoulders and looking him the eyes. And in his head he says _Please. I can’t do this without you._

Charles’ voice is weak from strain, and he does not meet Erik’s eye as he presses a kiss to his lips and lays his head on his shoulder. Erik wraps his arms tight around him and holds him like he’s a flame that might go out.

“Absolutely, my friend,” he murmurs, “just something in my throat.”

 

Erik dreams of nothing but the road. If the winter is going to end, they just have to keep going for another year, two at most. He’s survived that before, hungry and alone. Now he has a pack, and he does not have to be a lone wolf.

When the cold lifts, he wonders what they will do. Does it mean the sun will come out again? Does the sun even exist anymore, or is it just a nameless star in an endless empty sky?

Will plants come back to life?

The important thing, he knows, is to live. To make the most of everything. Not to have too many hopes and dreams. Your life is your life, and  
this is his.

He had a dream, once. Something to keep him going. A need for revenge. Look how that turned out.

 

Charles excuses himself from the fireside and the quiet conversation to wander off into the woods, into the dark. Sean and Hank are long since asleep, curled on the floor, and Alex sits on a tree stump and stares at the flickering flames.

“Dad?” he asks, quietly. Erik looks at him, and for a moment he is about to correct the boy, but then, for some reason, he doesn’t.

“Yes?”

“He’s getting worse, isn’t he?”

Erik looks at them him then, worry etched on Alex’s face, and fully realises what it means to have become an adult so suddenly. He remembers that he watched a friend die before this even happened, that betrayal and death and fear has aged him as it has aged Erik himself. But even now, he cannot bring himself to say the words that will condemn Charles, condemn him.

“Not by much,” he says.

Alex, picking mud from under the stubs of fingernails, gives him a look that says _I don’t believe you_ louder than any words in or out of his head ever could. There is a splinter in this thumb, and he works at it with her teeth.

“What will we do if he dies?” he says.

Erik doesn’t want to think about it, but he is always telling them that contingency plans are important.

“If he died,” he says, the words like lead on his tongue, in the speculative because he does not want to think of them as perfect, “then we would bury him, and we would move on.”

“To what?”

“To whatever we’re moving onto now.”

Alex looks unconvinced, so Erik does something he has never done before. He lies, not to serve an end, or to force himself to carry on, but to make someone he loves feel better.

“Honestly, Alex,” he says, leaning forward, “I would tell you if he was getting worse.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” He stands, and then pauses.

“Why have you started calling me Dad?”

Alex raises one eyebrow. “You know what it means, right?”

“Yes. It means father.”

Alex smiles thinly, and pulls the splinter out with a wince. “Nah, it means more than that,” he says.

 

Erik finds Charles in the woods a few minutes later, kneeling in the mud and coughing up blood.

“You’re dying, aren’t you,” he says levelly, leaning against a tree.

“Oh, shut up, for goodness’ sake,” Charles snaps, and Erik can’t help but smile.

 

There are days and days that go by on the endless unforgiving road, but nobody remembers them because nothing ever happens.

Well, nobody except Hank.

 

The sea rises up onto the icy shore, black and thickened by ash, and they stand on the cliff and look down at the beaches and the rocks. This is the Gulf Coast; it should be hot and humid and there should be bodies showing too much flesh wandering barefoot or lying on the sand. True, there are bodies, and some of them are naked, but more of them have no flesh at all. They lie there; half buried, arms outstretched, eternally screaming, charred to nothing but bones and the end of humanity. Praying for salvation that did not come in time, or was never coming at all.

“Don’t look if you don’t want to see,” Erik warns, as the boys approach the edge. “I won’t be holding your hand tonight if you have nightmares.”

“You’re a martyr, Dad,” Alex says, instantly pushing past him to get a better view. 

“Wow,” he says, his eyes drinking in every inch of the carnage below, “wicked.”

Charles furrows his brow, and leans on Erik’s arm for support, breathing heavily. “I suppose so,” he says, “and I’m glad you take the evils we are capable of so seriously.”

Sean laughs.

“You’re ridiculous, Prof,” he says fondly, and he reaches out and ruffles Charles’ hair. Charles’ eyes narrow.

“I could and would make you spend the rest of your life thinking you’re a kitten called Fluffles, Sean,” he says darkly, “so _do not touch the hair_.”

Sean looks like he’s about to test this, but Erik very silently and slightly shakes his head, and Sean thinks better of it.

“So we reached the coast, what now?” Hank asks, ever the practical one. Erik turns his head to the sky, wishing the sun was there to guide them.

“We’ll swim for it,” he says, eventually.

Hank stares at him like he’s a lunatic. “Are you serious?” he asks, staggered beyond belief.

“No,” Erik says witheringly, “of course not. We’ll follow the coast and see how we fare in Mexico.”

There is a pause in which nobody is quite sure what just happened, and then Hank laughs.

“My god, Dad, you tell jokes now?” he says, still chuckling, and he pulls his rucksack further up his back and starts off down the cliff. Erik makes to follow, but is stilled by Charles squeezing his arm.

“What is it?” he says, concerned.

Charles doesn’t speak immediately, looking out at the inky sea. When he does speak, his voice is hoarse.

“Why do you get to be Dad, and I’m still ‘Prof’?” he asks indignantly.

“Because you think ‘wicked’ is a bad thing, and dads have to be cool.”

“I’m cool,” says Charles, furrowing his brow, “I am - so cool, I’m groovy.”

“And that’s why you don’t get to be Dad,” says Erik, helping him navigate the rocky path. “Besides, there can be only one.”

“I will end you, Lehnsherr,” Charles chuckles, clinging to his arm. He takes a sudden sharp intake of breath, a hiss that ends in a cough. Erik lets him finish with the coughing fit, and then gently rubs his back and holds his arm more tightly.

“Not like that you won’t,” he says, his voice light, “so you probably ought to get better more rapidly.”

“I am working on it, goodness me, Erik, do you ever stop nagging?”

 

By an unspoken agreement, nobody mentions the fact that Charles coughs more and more every day, or the fact that he cannot really keep up when they have to run.

Nobody mentions it, in case Erik hears.

 

"Erik?"

Erik looks up, and sees Hank standing at the edge of the firelight, awake when he should not be.

"Yes?"

"I was - will you, um..."

Erik tries to look less threatening, but the smile shows all his teeth, which is not exactly relaxing.

"Will you... teach me Hebrew?" Hank asks, looking suddenly so small.

Erik feels a lump in his throat. "... Why?" he manages, eventually.

"I'd just - I think - " Hank cannot find the words, but he sits down next to Erik on a log, and looks at the floor. "Someone ought to know it."

The lump melts away to tears which Erik does not let fall. " _Ken_ ," he says, "yes. Yes, they should."

One day there will be a morning where Erik does not get up. He knows this. One day, he had assumed, nobody would get up at all, and the language of his people would be as forgotten as the language of birds. He places his hands on the back of his neck, and quietly sings a song his mother used to know, a song he had half forgotten.

He would hug Hank, if the boy did not look so utterly terrified.

 

Most evenings, the silence is so loud it is almost a sound itself. The roaring of nothingness closes them in, even on the most vast and empty of plains. There should be insects here, clicking in long grass, or birds wheeling overhead in an endless sky, or a cat skittering across a yard with an angry old woman following, shaking her fist and swearing.

Down on the coast, the only sound is the lapping of waves, far off in the distance, and sometimes a winged mutant soars high above them, but never seems to see them - or perhaps just doesn’t care.

If there are angels up above, they certainly don’t.

“Three hundred and forty one days and counting,” Hank says one morning, ignoring Charles spitting bloodied phlegm onto the earth in what they have fondly come to know as his ‘morning sickness’.

It is on this day that they meet the raiders; raiders they recognise, and wish they didn’t.

True to his nature, Azazel says nothing, but draws a long and slender knife and points them at Erik’s chest. Almost lazily, he points another at the rucksack.

“Fat chance,” Erik says, his voice caught half in his throat. “Where’s your boss?”

“Gone,” Azazel says without moving his lips, and then Riptide steps out from the shrubbery on the other side of the road. Like Azazel, he has a hunted look about him; furtive, far thinner than the men they fought in Cuba. His suit is gone, to be replaced by a thick coat, and most noticeably of all, he is missing an eye, the wound black and oozing, and scabbing over fast.

“What do you mean, gone?”

Riptide half smiles, and when he does the rotting hole in his face twists up inside himself, and makes him grimace with pain. “He didn’t need us anymore,” he says, matter-of-factly, “so we took off.”

“Also,” says Azazel, his voice far lower than Riptide’s, and somewhat slurred from coming through teeth that are clearly broken, “we killed him.”

Erik stares at them, somehow unable to understand. His breath hitches in his throat, plummets back down to where it came from, hitting the bottom of his stomach and turning it inside out. _Shaw. Schmidt. Dead. Killed by someone else. How - how could it -_

“What?” he asks, dizzy and confused and wondering why the words don’t make sense.

Riptide shrugs. “Shaw was disposable,” he says, with a leer. “He wanted this. He was mad.”

“You wanted this too,” Charles says weakly.

“No,” says Riptide scathingly, “we just did not want to play errands for the little human boys and girls. This does not make us monsters.”

“Yes, but killing people for fun makes us monsters, I think,” Azazel reminds him.

“Ah, yes.” Riptide chuckles to himself. Then Azazel flickers, and then he is a foot closer to them, and the knife is an inch from Erik’s throat.

“You have food,” Riptide says, “so hand it over.”

Erik is still reeling, cannot think, cannot move - _Shaw dead_ \- so Hank does it for him, pressing his large hands to Azazel’s throat. “And what if we say no, you psychopathic bastards?”

Azazel scowls, and rips himself from Hank’s grasp. He teleports next to Riptide, looking sullen, brushing fur from his coat.

“What did you do to Shaw?” Erik asks, clinging to the one thing that is still ringing in his ears.

Riptide looks at him, and raises one eyebrow - the one with dark pus still clinging to it. “You,” he says, recognition dawning, “ah, yes. Little Erik. Looking for revenge on bad men. He suffered, if that is what you want to know. We are creative, and Emma gave us her help.”

“Emma?” Charles asks, “where is she?”

Riptide shrugs eloquently. “Who is to know?” he asks the world in general, “Emma always did what she wanted. No doubt she will turn up in time, when the world is kneeling at her feet, in the place she always thought it should be. When she needs us, which is rare.”

“Look,” says Alex, “just fuck off and leave us alone. We don’t have any quarrel with you.”

“You might not, little boy,” Riptide says, “but I think your parents disagree.”

“Dad?” It is this word that brings Erik crashing back to earth with a jerk, drags him from strange dancing memories and hazy bloodlust dreams, all shattering in an instant. “We don’t need them, right?”

Erik turns to Alex as if he doesn’t quite know who he is, and then, almost like a dancer or a man entranced, he steps slowly forward.

“You killed Shaw,” he finds himself repeating, the words tasting strange in his mouth.

“Yes.”

And then Erik stretches out a hand, the fillings in Riptide’s mouth calling to him, and pulls. The blood comes gushing, and Riptide staggers back as they rip from his mouth, called by the force of Erik’s song, and Azazel throws his knife at the same time, and it sticks in Erik’s arm - and Azazel grabs Riptide, who is cursing through the froth that comes gargling out, spraying over Azazel‘s body, and then they are gone.

The whole thing is over in less than ten seconds.

Erik drops to the ground, hissing out between his teeth, and he rips the knife from his arm. The blood wells up, but he doesn’t see it, because the red mist in his eyes blinds him. The pain does not even occur.

“ _Hurensohn_ ,” he spits, clenching his hand to stem the flow. Then Charles is by him, clamping his own hand down on the wound, tearing at the scarf wrapped round his neck and tying it down tightly. He holds him in his thin and wasted arms, and crushes his lips to his cheek.

“He’s gone, Erik,” he says through his tears, “he’s gone, he’s dead. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

“He was mine,” Erik hisses, still desperately trying to get up, pushing Charles from him, but Charles flings his body back on him, pulls him closer and tighter. Erik gabbles words he isn’t aware of over Charles’ inane babbling, desperate to get to his feet and run and kill something.

“You can forget about him now,” he begs, “you can move on, you’ve got us.”

“Fuck - Charles - I’m going to - get off me,” he yells, and he pulls free with one final effort. He drags himself to his feet, and does not see the boys staring at him, does not see anything but the open road.

_Erik._

He starts to run.

“Erik - ” Charles calls, and forces himself to his feet. He tries to run forward, but doubles over coughing. Erik has had to run for his life before, and no dying man has any chance of catching him. Nonetheless, Charles tries, sprinting after him with legs that threaten at every second to buckle underneath him, ignoring the cries of the others. “Erik!” he shouts again, and then he falls to the ground, and does not get up again.

Hank, however, catches up with Erik easily, flinging out one large arm, grabbing his coat’s hood, and throwing a well placed punch to the back of his head. Erik stumbles, and falls somehow into Hank’s tight grip.

“Get your fucking hands off me, child,” Erik snaps. Hank says nothing, but spins him round, and points him back down the way he came.

It is then, on the three hundredth and forty first day, that Erik sees Charles, lying in the dust on the frozen tarmac, hands clutching Sean’s, desperately trying to get a purchase on the air that eludes him. A single drip of blood trickles from his mouth and splashes on the road.

“Charles,” Erik breathes, and then there is only them in the world.

 

And then there is only them in the world.

 

“You’re going to be alright,” Erik whimpers like a lost child, holding his head up, cradling him in his lap.

“No,” Charles says with the honesty of a man whom lies cannot save, “I’m not.”

He reaches out a trembling hand and traces the lines of Erik’s face, his bitten fingernails catching in the stubble.

“I won’t let you go,” Erik swears, “I will go to hell and I will drag you back.”

“Thank you… very much, my love, but I don’t intend to go to hell.” He chokes again. Erik tries to help him sit up a little more.

“Of course you’re going to hell, you stupid fool,” Erik says through his pain, “you’re a mutant and a queer.”

“Bugger off,” Charles says, gasping out a laugh that Erik can feel hurting, the barriers of his powers breaking down. _I love you_ , Erik whispers in his mind, _I will not be able to do this without you. I will follow you. I will not be far behind._

 _You can’t._ Charles shakes his head. _You can’t come with me._

_Charles. Please. Don't do this._

_You have to look after them, Erik._

_I can't. Not without you._

“Erik,” Charles says desperately, “you don’t have a choice.” He beckons with shaking fingers and pulls Erik into one last lingering kiss, his lips mouthing broken words against Erik’s.

_You never - had - a choice -_

Charles draws in one rattling breath, and Erik turns his face away, pulls the man he loves tight to his chest, unable to watch as his eyes go wide. Charles quivers in his arms, and then the light goes out.

And then there is only him in the world.

 

They dig the grave as a team, using rocks and branches and whatever they can find until they have a hole deep enough. The ground is too hard to dig it properly, so a shallow final resting place it will have to be. But they dig it far enough away from the roadside that it will actually be final.

Hank lowers the so much smaller form into the grave, and says nothing. There is confusion on his face, and Erik knows he is trying to make sense of a situation that doesn’t. Alex stares down at the blanket for a few moments, and then blows a low whistle under his breath and storms away into the woods. Sean wanders far enough away that he thinks Erik can’t see him, clasps his hands together, and tries to pray.

Erik stands at the foot of the pit, and wonders which one he should go after, and what there is to say to any of them. What can you say to someone whose life has been ripped from them, when you are still mourning your own? What is there to say, and how can he possibly make this better?

Charles was right. He wasn’t going to hell. Hell is this dying world, and all the demons are here too.

Erik fills the grave in himself, leaves it unmarked and covers it with dead branches so as not to draw scavengers. He sits by the graveside until the sky turns from ash to black, and the stars do not come out, and he sits there until his children return with tears staining their cheeks, and then they leave the ends of a hero behind and stagger blindly and silently through the dark with only torchlight to guide their way.

 

“How many days, Hank?”

“Three hundred and fifty five and counting.”

“That’s good. That’s - that’s good.”

 

The United States - Mexico border is a forbidding sight at the best of times, and the large metal fence that has destroyed so many lives rises high above their heads. To Erik, it is at most a nuisance. He was breaking fences long before this. He grips it in his hands from two hundred yards away, and flings the chain links out of their way.

They cross in silence, and each is thinking of the cost.

It is the three hundredth and fifty sixth day after the bombs.

“Where are we going?” Alex asks in a raw voice, as they walk past a border office. Erik turns to him, and shrugs.

“I don’t know, Alex,” he says, honestly but not unkindly. “I don’t know.”

“Then what’s the point?” Sean is scared, and Erik cannot in all clear conscience blame him. But the truth is, Charles was the one who thought there was a point. For Erik, the plan was always just to survive.

“The point,” he says, and he steps forward and places a hand on Alex’s shoulder, looking at each of the boys in turn, “is that we’re still walking. Yes?”

Sean and Alex nod awkwardly. “Lots of people aren’t,” says Hank accusatorially. “Lots of people died.”

“People die every day, and hey! Don‘t you _dare_ turn your back on me, Hank,” says Erik, catching him by the wrist and turning him to look at him. Hank looks angry, defiant, full of blame.

“People die,” Erik repeats, harshly. “But you grieve for them. You don’t forget. You hold them in your heart or your head or your god or wherever you want them to be, but that doesn’t mean you just lay down and die with them. I have seen more people die than you could ever imagine, my boy, and I have caused more than a few myself. I have lost everything I ever had. I have gone mad, and I have seen the end of the world. And after all that, here we are, just me…”

He pauses, and searches for the words. “Just me and you,” he finishes, “and we are still walking. That’s the point.”

Sean nearly knocks him over, flinging his arms around Erik’s neck and sobbing like a child. Erik returns the hug almost as tightly, and he stretches his arms out behind Sean and beckons with his hands. Hank joins after only a few moments, and his embrace is hard enough to knock the wind right out of both of them, but Erik holds on tight, holds onto the only things he has. Alex hangs back, afraid.

“Alex,” Erik says, “come on. Please.”

Like a scared animal approaching a wounded enemy, Alex tentatively comes forward. He stretches out arms that aren’t used to being used for anything other than sparring, and joins his family in a hug.

Slowly, finally, after all this time, Erik can feel them starting to cry. He wraps his arms around them all, these three scared boys who are fast becoming men, and feels like his heart might split wide open. “You’re insane, Dad,” Alex sniffs into his shirt, “you’re a fucking lunatic.”

“It’s the only way to survive, _ben_ ,” he says, letting go of all three of them. A small mad and joyous smile creeps across his face, through the tears. Then he thinks of Charles, and whacks Alex sharply around the head.

“And mind your fucking language,” he adds.

 

It has been cold for an entire year now.

This is a broken world that doesn’t know how to sing. A world without light or sound, and only the fires far below the surface keep it turning, turning, spinning like a dust speck round a ball of flame it can no more see than the stars or the gods themselves. It is a frozen world, too cold to breathe. Cold enough to snuff you out.

And down there in the fire and the ice, on the road that doesn’t end, four specks keep moving.

They do not ever stop.

And their fire burns brightest of all.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains references to, at various points: **rape, death, pregnancy, cannibalism, and nuclear fallout**. There are significant passages with graphic descriptions of the last two, although both are, I hope, treated sensitively. 
> 
> It also contains **major character death**.
> 
> As is expected in any fic featuring Erik Lensherr, it also contains references to the Holocaust, and comparisons are drawn with it by the characters in the story.


End file.
